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1.27.2011

I decided to do my research on an online company called Groupon. Groupon is an advertising company that markets deals of the day. Groupon works by having mass amounts of people subscribe to their service and once a day they send out a deal. The deal is usually a local deal and the customers pay a really low price for a voucher and then turn in that voucher to the business for the service or item. This is a great service that provides a way for a business to attract a lot of new customers with low risk since there is a critical mass.

So I chose to do research on how Groupon is reaching out to the Hispanic markets because it is one of the fastest growing companies right now. I thought it would be interesting to see how a young company that is growing extremely fast would handle this situation. The Hispanic market for marketing is huge… in 2008 Ad Age reported that $1.5 billion was invested in local Hispanic media so this is definitely something that Groupon is positioning itself to capture.

There are three major components that will make up success for a company like Groupon to succeed in the Hispanic market. They would need a minimum amount of consumers and the ability to get the interest of local advertisers. They then would need to understand how the online Hispanic market behaves, what sites they visit, what products they are interested in.

One of the major reasons why Groupon would do well in the Hispanic market is that according to the US Census Hispanic small business have increased by almost 45% which is twice the national average [1]. That would answer one of my components with enough local advertisers. Another major reason is the amount of Hispanics using the internet. Based on research done by the pew research center 18% of Hispanics use twitter compared to 8% of African American and 5% of Whites [2]. That is a pretty astounding number and should allow Groupon hit critical mass. I think the piece of the puzzle understands the Hispanic culture and its nuances in order to properly position itself.

What I have found is that Groupon is actually global. They have expanded to Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. I think as of now they are treating the American public as the same. They are allowing the interested companies be the one that decides what the product market is. I also have found a lot of upstart companies that are trying to carve out their niche as the Hispanic Groupon. So is Groupon missing the boat on the Hispanic market in the US? No, I really think they have it figured out. They are localized by nature so they are able to have demographics on each of their markets and the consumers and the businesses reflect that. What they have figured out is having a national corporation that plays differently depending on the market. So in Hispanic rich markets the ads they choose are ads that reflect the population that subscribes to their service. What other business knows their customer better than Groupon? They actually can provide business exact demographics compared to other advertising venues.

1.26.2011

I am very excited to have finally stood up my online portfolio! After years of owning my name domain it finally has something great to point to. Please check out my site at www.davidscottrosen.com! Thanks!